Indieguerillas | Fools’lore: Folklore Reload

The first word in the title is a play of words. The term Fools’lore does not exist in the English vocabulary as a single or hyphenated word. Here, it is introduced as a parody of Folklore. The understanding of ‘fool’ here finds its equivalent in the Bahasa Indonesia concept of pandir: stupid, idiotic, humorous, but not without charm. Fools’lore is an epic created by Indieguerillas.

The storylines of fools’lore were born from the artists’ experiences in engaging folklore. Indieguerillas took it as their mission to re-load various traditional folk tales into the contemporary art scene. This intentional reload process is aimed towards unpredictable effects and sensations. These results are achieved through combining signs, compositions, characterization of figures created (or re-created). It is not only done in a single media, but also intermedia. Through this reload process, they grasp an opportunity to present their versions of history. Their attitude is staunch: they refuse to be dictated by history while at the same time responding to and thriving within the popular culture that upholds temporal appearances. In many ways, this fools’lore project is subversive.

As if anxious of the insecurities and uncertainties of life’s impermanency, people seek principles to hold on to. One of their choices is to believe in mythologies. Disregarding authenticity and accuracy of a myth, folk tales are considered reliable by many as guidance for daily life, even among modern society. Myth blends itself into daily activities. Like a mirror, in myth we often find a semblance of precision, compatibility, and similarity between our characters and those in the traditional shadow puppet stories. As the industry of popular-culture grows, heritage such as traditional shadow puppetry is pushed aside, diminishing in popularity. Many folk tales are in danger of dying. They lay asunder, often neglected between a waning past and the people’s pressing needs for signs that hold the promise of fresh forms.

At this point Indieguerillas see themselves as part of this inevitable object undergoing change. They became a part of the popular-culture industry, producing a lot of visually communicate works. Their industrial works deal with many messages. Their consideration of communicative values lends a readability that can still seduce audiences. Their backgrounds, Santi Ariestyowanti from Visual Communication Design and Dyatmiko (Miko) Bawono from Interior Design (both of the Fine Arts Faculty at the Indonesia Art Institute Yogyakarta) equipped them with sensitivity on symbolism and space. Symbols need space, and on the other hand, a space becomes meaningless without the presence of symbols.

They are interested in re-evaluating various symbols found in the many folk tales, fairy tales and epic tales known throughout the Indonesian archipelago. But, the folk tales adopted by indieguerillas function differently. Certainties or even “truth” of epic tales or folk tales for indieguerillas are spaces for experimentation, to be filled with surprises. This appropriation is as simple as indieguerillas adopting popular-culture industry objects and actors, like the world’s music celebrities, sneaker shoes, robotic figures, and fashion. The folk tales are re-polished with a more up-to-date popular image.

The works exhibited here show a composition of adoptions. Indieguerillas left the original characters evident, but they exist within the visual aspects of popular culture, down from the attributes, make up, up to the characters’ visage. What matters on the act of adoption is the passion given through beautified shapes. Signs are reformulated by playing with scales and size volumes. Done to find dramatic points, these changes result in surprising effects, and the discovery of new codes due to the excitement of the game.

Indieguerillas is a group of creative people, well known among the art-appreciating public for the shadow-puppet characters they use. The group was established in 1999 and had gained wide appreciation within the arts scene. Indieguerillas’ works can be seen on the cover designs of books, magazines, and record cassettes. Santi and Miko are a married couple who both work in art and design. Different from most full time artists, their creative process is divided into time for “play” and “work”.

Play means killing time by experimenting with their art. Sometimes Santi will scribble graphic designs while Miko plays guitar or creates music compositions on the computer. Play sometimes becomes work when their little tinkering develops into something more serious, for example the creation of Outmagz, an Indie magazine, and the forming of Stereovilla, a band they claim plays rotten pop music.

The indieguerillas are not limited by medium. They were once involved in mural and propaganda-stickers bombing. At that time, they didn’t come up with visual solutions to society problems as dictated by the unspoken code of ethics among graphic designers. Their personal conscience to be objects of change within the popular culture led them to create fools’lore. A creation that is evolving directly from the centre of the popular culture itself.

In popular culture, there is greater frequency of changes between images; the transition between events, the changeover from one trend to another. Nowadays, people are taken deeper into impermanency, making it harder to take some distance to reflect.

Reflecting is getting more difficult to do because the form and meaning of signs are changing ever so rapidly. Images can be assigned a certain meaning, but then again they could have no meaning at all, except for being symbols. In a state of impermanency, people need something more principal, not necessarily serious, but in a more refreshing form. They do not need dogma folding the world in halves of black and white; they need parody even when it’s dumb.

Playing dumb is a common thing nowadays. In fact, not being able to dumb-down can be cause for embarrassment. Are we living an era of madness? This situation was once predicted in the Kalatida Sutra:

(During the era of madness) Amenangi Zaman Edan
(Every deed becomes confusing) Ewuh Aya Ing Pambudi
(Madness will come if you can’t handle it) Melu Edan Ora Tahan
(But if you’re not doing it) Yen Tan Melu Anglakoni
(You won’t get anything) Boya Keduman Melik
(You will be left starving) Kaliren Wekasanipun
(As God Wills) Dilalah Kersaning Allah
(Ignorance is bliss) Begja – Begjane Kang Lali
(but, Awareness is more rewarding) Luwih Begja Kang Eling Lan Waspada

—Ronggowarsito
(fragment from the seventh verse of the Kalatida Sutra)

Fools’lore is a tale that revisits the dumbness in this age Ronggowarsito described as the era of madness. Indieguerillas offer a pair of gigantic shoes, gracing two mammoth pillars, shoelaces tied together. The pillars are the strong feet of a building constructed in Italian minimalist style, “Just like Gatotkaca’s legs with iron bones and wiry muscles,” enthused Santi. On the audio-visual medium you can see a Banyan tree inspired from the “Gunungan”, an object that can readily be identified from the traditional shadow puppet, yet it’s filled with daily-life stories. The object is filled with daily noises provided by Ari “Midijunkie” Wulu, a DJ who devotes his attention to non-prominent daily cultural activities. He responded to Indieguerillas’ audio-visual work by providing sound accentuation to each fragment.

In today’s popular culture, signs can easily cross over; their boundaries intersect as bytes of data obliquely traverse a landscape of meaning. For so long, signs have been trapped within their own limitations. Technology pervasive throughout our lives, like the Internet, has provided a medium for these signs to evolve, stream, multiply, and develop into unpredictable forms. These enable agents of change to simply cut and paste. Just like the “Dasamuka” by Indieguerillas taking on the faces of KISS vocalist Gene Simmons, Marilyn Manson, the clown-mask of the Slipknot band, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Hannibal Lecter, and recombining them into a new configuration. The resulting Dasamuka became an ambiguous sign in the context of East-West relations. Which one is West and which one is East becomes no longer authentic, the cut and paste strategy blurs the previous signs’ stability of meaning.

Orient and Occident cannot be taken here as “realities” to be compared and contrasted historically, philosophically, culturally, politically. I am not lovingly gazing toward an Oriental essence…What can be addressed, in the consideration of the Orient, are not the other symbols, another metaphysics, another wisdom…it is the possibility of difference, of a mutation, of a revolution in the propriety of a symbolic system. Someday we must write the history of our own obscurity—manifest the destiny of our narcissism.

—Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang.1982),
as quoted by Dick Hebdige in Murakami’s exhibition catalogue (2008-2009)

Due to the clash of random signs, this collage produces a new situation. The mix proves that the Indonesian folk tales adopted by indieguerillas are able to bring a new discourse outside the “colonialist” East-West juxtaposition. A dialogue that brings us to new possibilities of the original stories, which is believed to have essential values, which eventually turns into new symbols or new narratives. I think the power of these new narratives, distilled to a playful idiom, is what Indieguerillas have aimed for in their first solo exhibition.

Sudjud Dartanto (Yogyakarta, November, 25th 2008)


Curatorial